


I'm Folding My Hand

by Pilandok



Category: Dead To Me (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/F, I'm Sorry, One Shot, Sad Porn, Smut, jen is both a power bottom and a bratty bottom and i said what i said
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:08:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26714980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pilandok/pseuds/Pilandok
Summary: Jen has never been so cold in her life and maybe the closest source of warmth is the woman who killed your husband. Takes place in between seasons.
Relationships: Judy Hale/Jen Harding
Comments: 34
Kudos: 55





	I'm Folding My Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, it's my first time writing for this fandom but I fell so hard and fast for the show so yknow *shrugs*. I had this idea floating around for a while about writing what happens between the first two seasons and then I read the incredible fic "i could never give you peace" by queen_C with the same premise (I consumed all fucking jen/judy content I could get my fucking hands on in a short amount of time) and wondered if I should still write it. But why like, why not? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

Jen’s hands are so cold. They’ve never been this cold, she’s always ran hot. She rubs them together, trying to expunge the scent of chlorine and the frost of the freezer. She’s so fucking cold.

Judy is hunched over her knees, sitting on Jen’s bed, wrapping herself in a tight embrace. Jen can’t bring herself to be kind to her. Guilt hasn’t settled in yet— forgiveness, impossible to think about right now. She can only think of how cold she is. When Judy stands up to pace the room, Jen sits on the vacated spot, inadvertently relishing the warmth she left over.

“Are you okay?” Judy asks the stupidest questions sometimes, but always earnestly. Jen doesn’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

“My hands are so cold,” Jen replies, looking at them resting limply on her lap. Judy reaches out to touch them and it burns. Every time Judy touches her, it’s a white hot heat. Ever since she told the truth about Ted— Jen winces at the thought. She hates the burn, she thinks it must be a sort of hell. She’s getting punished for letting her husband’s killer touch her.

But now, she needs it. Needs to forget the sensation of a cold, cold body.

Judy kneels on the bed beside Jen, furiously rubbing at her hands, albeit deliriously. The friction is almost painful but Jen is so, so cold. Judy is still so eager to appease her, still begging for forgiveness. Jen knows she doesn’t have a leg to stand on anymore, no moral high ground over Judy, not after tonight. But who’s keeping score? Does one dead husband equal to a dead ex-fiancé? How many points does vehicular manslaughter get as opposed to murder?

Jen grimaces at her own callous humor, she feels her pulse slow to a crawl.

“Jesus Jen, your hands are freezing,” Judy says, her voice still like bells, as if it’s the most pressing problem right now and not the other thing that’s freezing in the garage. Judy attempts to blow hot air onto Jen’s palms.

They’re insane, Jen thinks, the both of them are insane. But Judy is so warm. She’s vibrating at a high frequency, she’s sweating, Jen observes, her hot mouth almost touching her hands.

Then Jen continues the night’s streak of inexplicable actions and reaches up to trace Judy’s jawline with her right hand, then in a sudden motion, she unceremoniously shoves four fingers inside Judy’s mouth, her thumb curling at the corner of her lip.

Judy makes a slight choking noise and a small flame lights up inside Jen.

“I’m so cold,” Jen whispers intently. Judy doesn’t move away. Jen slowly prods her fingers deeper inside Judy’s mouth, tracing the dip of her tongue, feeling the front of her teeth scrape her knuckles. Judy’s hand is frozen around Jen’s wrist. She has that frightened look on her face, a kicked puppy dog stare. Jen hates it, hates how easily it tugs her heart. It can’t for Judy, not anymore, not when she killed Ted, not when she lied for months. She isn’t allowed to be the most forgivable person in the room. _But maybe she is._

Jen almost gives into the feeling, something bubbling like rage or regret, but she remembers the hum of the freezer, remembers that it was so fucking cold.

A shiver travels through her body and Judy must’ve felt it because her hand tightens around Jen’s wrist. Judy looks straight into Jen’s eyes before running her warm tongue along her fingers. Judy licks them greedily, coating each digit with her saliva, catching at the skin where each finger meets the palm.

Judy’s hot mouth sets Jen’s mind ablaze. She pushes herself off the bed and stands in front of Judy who doesn’t falter on her grip around Jen’s wrist, still licking her fingers earnestly. Eager, so eager, doing anything that Jen wants her to. She follows Jen’s motion and positions herself to face Jen squarely as she sits against her heels on the bed. Her eyes flutter close as she slowly bobs her head on the fingers.

There’s something about the sight of Judy trying to do everything she can for Jen, doing something so bizarre and unreasonable, so obediently. Tears are slowly forming on the corner of Judy’s eyes, a single line of drool travels down her chin and obscenely falls onto her lap. The image stokes a fire inside the pit of Jen’s stomach.

She presses down on the back of Judy’s tongue and Judy gags on her fingers, almost lurching forward. But Jen catches her shoulder, gripping hard and pulling her up to rest her weight on her knees. In a swift motion, she removes her fingers from Judy’s mouth and grabs the back of her neck to pull her into a sloppy kiss.

Judy makes a small sound against Jen’s mouth and the fire in Jen’s stomach blooms into a burning sensation that shoots straight down between her legs. Everything has been so confusing, her own actions, baffling. But this is familiar, she understands her own arousal. She recognizes the fucked up situation they’re in but it’s eclipsed by the loud thumping of Judy’s pulse where her hand rests on her neck, right at the artery. She presses down on the pulse point.

“I’m so fucking cold.”

Judy, who had a glazed look over her face, stiffens to attention. She reaches for Jen, ever so fucking eager to help, to please. Not realizing that she probably doesn’t have to appease Jen anymore. Jen has just cashed in the favor of a lifetime so the karmic scales have already tipped back to Judy’s side. Again, not that anyone’s keeping score.

Judy’s arm stops halfway through the motion. Seeing her like this ignites something in Jen that may feel like guilt but every emotion after Judy’s confession has translated into anger and she would rather have that than the cold her blood ran as soon as she realized what Judy meant by _I hit him._ She would rather be angry than be that cold again— so cold that a bonfire of Judy’s things couldn’t warm her up, not even the hot tears in her eyes as she held the gun.

“Jen let me...” Judy begins, arm still hovering awkwardly between them. She doesn’t seem to know what to say next, doesn’t know what to offer, hasn’t figured out what is it exactly that Jen wants.

“Fuck me.”

Jen sees the alarm going off in Judy’s head, it’s probably the last thing she expected to hear. Jen doesn’t know if she, herself, did before she spoke the words but she pushes Judy onto the bed. She hears her exhale on the rough landing. Judy lifts herself up on her elbows, looking at Jen desperately, mouth open to protest, maybe, but whatever she was going to say dies on her lips as she watches Jen cast off her robe and remove her pants and panties in one go. She gathers her shirt onto her waist. Judy’s eyes darken at the sight of Jen exposed. It’s enough to keep embarrassment at bay, stops her from realizing that she’s an almost 50-year old woman from the suburbs showing her pussy off to her ex-best friend. Maybe, if she hadn’t heard Judy’s quiet groan and the shift of her thighs, she would’ve been shaken into rationality with how juvenile the word ‘ex-best friend’ sounds.

Jen drops her knees onto the bed and crawls upward until she’s straddling Judy’s waist.

“Jen, I don’t— this isn’t—” Judy stammers, panic resurfacing. “What’s happening?”

“Shut up,” she replies, then softer, “I don’t know.”

“Jen...”

“I’m so cold,” Jen says in a shuddering sigh. She can’t stop the tears starting to pool in her eyes, lips quivering, a sob threatening to escape. She’s still gripping at the hem of her shirt.

The fear in Judy’s face slowly melts into sympathy.

“You aren’t, honey,” Judy says, running her hands on Jen’s thighs, “you’re so warm, Jen. You’re alive.”

And it’s what Jen wants to hear, Judy’s good at figuring out the right words sometimes, knowing what Jen needs before she does. Except now things are different with their cards laid out on the fucking table. Judy killed her husband and Steve left him to die and she killed Steve. And those were the loves of their fucking lives and Jen can’t have Judy saying _alive_. They don’t have the right to revel in it. So she shoves her hand back inside Judy’s mouth.

She traces the lines of Judy’s molars and Judy’s faster now in figuring out what to do with her tongue and it helps bring heat to Jen’s frozen fingertips. But it’s nothing compared to the searing sensation on Jen’s thighs where Judy’s hands have stilled. It’s not enough, it’s not enough. She needs it to burn inside of her, to stoke the flames in her guts.

“Fuck me,” Jen barked again. Judy makes a garbled noise with Jen’s fingers still in her mouth. It sounds like a refusal. “Please. I need it, Jude”

It may be the nickname that does the trick. Judy twists her head to the side until Jen’s fingers fall out. She looks back up at Jen, her eyes betraying arousal.

“How many fingers?”

“Four,” Jen breathes.

Judy pauses, concern in her eyes, but eventually Jen feels her positioning her fingers underneath her. Jen lowers herself slightly to feel them, aligning them to her entrance.

“Jen. You don’t- you don’t seem too wet.” Judy’s still full of trepidation but Jen can zero in on something dark and heavy lacing her voice.

“It’s enough,” Jen says simply before lowering herself onto Judy’s fingers all at once. _Fuck_ , Jen winces at the pain of the sudden stretch, Judy’s fingers catching halfway. She can feel them jerk away slightly. “Don’t move,” she growls.

“I don’t think— Jen are you okay?”

“Yes,” she replies through gritted teeth but she’s telling the truth. It hurts but it’s exactly what she wants, the pain shooting heat up to her stomach and down to her toes. Judy’s hand is as hot as ever, she feels them like embers inside of her. It’s already made her wet enough that on her second movement, Judy’s fingers slide all the way in.

“Holy shit,” Judy breathes, gripping Jen’s hips with her free hand, thumb pressing on the bone jutting out.

“Your fingers are so hot,” Jen says, voice low. She leans forward until she can rest her left hand on Judy’s shoulder and the right on the mattress space beside Judy’s head. She uses the leverage to grind herself harder onto the fingers, the slick sound of Judy’s fingers entering her again and again echoes loudly in the room.

“ _You’re_ so hot, Jen,” Judy says in a tone Jen can’t quite figure out. She watches Judy’s eyes drift down to where their bodies meet, to where her fingers have been disappearing inside Jen. “You’re so hot, it feels so good inside of you.”

Jen doesn’t know what Judy’s talking about, she feels like she’s the one stealing all her body heat, that she needs Judy to thaw her out. But then Judy curls her fingers inside of her and the sensation takes sole occupation in her mind.

“Judy, _fuck_. Judy do that again,” Jen says in a voice she can’t even recognize, so clouded with a desperate desire that she wonders if she’s even understandable. “ _Please_.”

Judy does as she’s told and Jen bucks her hips wildly. She throws her head back and grips harder on the mattress and Judy’s shoulder, trying to push herself further onto the fingers. The pleasure that’s been building inside her is a blaze that’s filling up every room in her body: choking her lungs, torching her heart.

Judy arches her back, starting to grind her hips against Jen, the push on her hand sending her deeper inside. Every simultaneous thrust is punctuated by a strangled moan from Jen who has been biting her lips to minimize the noise.

“Have you thought about this before?” Judy asks in a whisper, mid-thrust.

Jen almost doesn’t hear it, but she does. She wishes she didn’t because she doesn’t want to answer her. Doesn’t want to entertain Judy’s inability to just let things happen and not stake any greater meaning into things. But Judy is curling her fingers insider her in a steady rhythm now, every graze of her finger on that sensitive spot inside Jen loosens her lips, like Judy’s coaxing an answer out of her. What an unfair trick.

Jen drops her head to look at Judy.

“I have,” she says honestly, breathlessly, “but not like this.”

It takes a second for the meaning to settle in the air and Jen turns away when the beginning of what looks like heartbreak forms in Judy’s eyes.

_Not like this._

Not in the universe where Judy is _the driver_. Not when Jen already knows how it feels to kill a man. Not in the reality where everything has been so irreversibly fucked that she doesn’t know the difference between love and hate and guilt. So much guilt.

Judy’s movements have slowed down but it doesn’t matter because Jen is so close. She shuts her eyes tightly, she can’t look now, she doesn’t even want to be seen. Not like this. She feels like she’s been robbed of the tenderness she had let herself imagine in those happier times, in those split seconds between friendly touches. When she had allowed herself to think, about Judy, _maybe one day_.

Now there’s only today, and no version of tomorrow that isn’t haunted by an endless tapestry of lies.

Jen feels Judy shift under her and her eyes snap open. She catches Judy with her head turned to side, lips brushing against the inside of Jen’s wrist, leaving a hint of a kiss. Jen’s stomach turns, somehow that contact is the thing that burns the most, it feels like it would leave a permanent scar.

That pushes her over the edge and she feels the corners of her vision blur at the overwhelming pleasure, her senses having no time to focus on anything other than the explosion between her legs. She doesn’t even want to think about the mess she’s made on Judy’s dress, only collapses on top of her, resting her head on Judy’s shoulder.

“Jen,” Judy says it like she’s in a dream and Jen’s leg twitches, still grinding slowly to ride out her orgasm. “Jen, I—“

Jen shuts her up with a hard kiss. She doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t want to give up the warmth yet, knowing how harsh the cold of their reality is. Jen bites the bottom of Judy’s lip and swallows the moan she lets out.

“Keep going,” Jen breathes. Judy looks like she doesn’t understand what she’s being told so Jen tries to lift herself up to move again into Judy’s fingers that are still, inside her. She’s trying to power through the shakiness of her legs and the oversensitivity of her nerves but she falls back onto her elbows.

“Shit,” Judy says in some kind of awe, then wraps her free arm around Jen’s shoulder to pull her close. She presses her lips against Jen’s ear, “it’s okay, I got you, baby. You don’t need to move, okay?”

Judy starts pumping her fingers in and out of Jen in a slow pace, helping her overcome the remnants of her last climax to build her up anew. Jen lifts her hips up slightly, giving Judy more freedom to move. At this, Judy presses her thumb onto Jen’s clit.

Soon enough, Jen is reduced into a shuddering mass of pleasure and swallowed moans and she marvels at her own greed. Jen doesn’t hesitate now, burying her face into Judy’s neck, helping herself to all the warmth, making Judy do all the work. She lets every moan vibrate onto Judy’s pulse point. Judy has quickened to a merciless pace, curling her fingers hard and fast inside Jen.

By the time Jen is nearing her second orgasm, she can’t help the tears. She’s so tired. She’s so fucking _spent._

“It’s okay, honey,” Judy soothes her, lips meeting the top of Jen’s hair, “come now.”

Jen climaxes in a silent scream, her body shaking. She feels herself unravel completely. It’s as if everything inside her has ben extinguished. No more fires and no more ice.

Judy slides her fingers out of Jen, the slick sound loud against the silence. She moves Jen to lie down on the bed and straighten her legs. Jen does, but never disengaging her arms around Judy and keeping her face buried in her neck. When Judy has lain them both down with their heads on the pillows and bodies under the covers, she traces shapes onto Jen’s shoulder. Random patterns, maybe, or things that mean something to Judy, like mandalas. Jen knows as much.

It’s the closest thing that has felt to _maybe one day_.

“Jen, I love you.” There it is.

Jen has thought about it, oh god she has. She has thought about it so much it kept her up many nights through the haze of alcohol, fixating on whatever lingering touch Judy gave her. She had loved Ted so, so much. Even through the worst of it. It wouldn’t have hurt like it did if she hadn’t. That’s why she knew what she was feeling with Judy, even when it happened so fast that it was bewildering. She knew what falling in love felt like.

Jen thinks that she must be a psychopath (she already knows that she’s a murderer.) But she won’t ever admit it to anyone, sworn herself another secret, how she almost forgave Judy instantly. For taking her husband away, for lying to her face as she watched her desperately try to find the killer. On the night of Judy’s confession, when Jen was watching Judy roll her suitcase out of the guesthouse from her bedroom window, a panic started in her chest. Her mind began running a mile a minute, working on the mental gymnastics of how to accept her, how to forgive. Just so she can keep Judy with her, just so she could stop _losing._

She almost did, if not for the boys. She couldn’t forgive what Judy had done to her sons. They lost a parent, the one thing that Jen worked so hard to prevent them from living through, the thing she sacrificed so much for. That night, she would’ve ran out to chase Judy, but then she saw a vision of Charlie as an adult, being so angry at the world. Of a grown Henry curled up on his bed, crying to a picture of him and his father.

“I hate you.” Jen means it, really.

Judy freezes but Jen doesn’t move away, still pressed up against her. Still breathing in the scent of Judy’s hair. After a beat, Judy continues her motions. It’s different now, no more lazy circles. Jen can recognize letters being purposefully drawn out. If she was a better person, she’d try to make out what they say.

Instead, she drifts off to sleep and dreams of indecipherable love letters.

—

The next day, when Jen sees Henry run up to Judy to give her a tight hug and Charlie shows a hint of a smile at the sight of them making breakfast together, she wonders if she’s the worst person in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I'd be happy to read your reviews!
> 
> Title is from "Good Morning" by Norah Jones.
> 
> Edit: I has twit now because who knows?? @aprilopenmybill


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